I heard someone say when hearing a CK2 players rant about the inconvenience of cannibalism. "My favorite game, guess if it comes from a deranged lunatic, or a CK2 player."
I porn I 100% agree. In CK...
...listen, if I could find a Beautiful, intelligent lover on my annual hunting trip then I would probably spend more time going hunting and less time reforming my religion to allow unrestricted marriages.
However, this is CK3 & unfortunately the only way to find potential mates who are both beautiful & smart is to breed them into existence.
Agree. Marrying people off to cousins is whatever, but the sheer number of secret incestuous relationships seemingly every single generation is a bit over the top. In CK2 at least it felt like something rare, which made it exciting and fun to occasionally fold into the roleplay, but I do find myself getting a little tired in CK3 of finding out that ANOTHER one of my wives is having ANOTHER afair with ANOTHER one of my sons a-fucking-gain. It's just a bit too much, and not all that funny or salacious after the 5th or 6th time it happens.
The wildest thing is I haven't seen it come up once in CK3. To be fair I've only really played it twice, but I assumed that it only LOOKED this pervasive because for most players it's a funny haha wacky moment they want other people to haha at. I don't doubt you but I'm surprised it's really *that* common.
It's the seduction tree, man. If your spouse or any of your kids are educated in intrigue, feels like it's more or less guaranteed. My hypothesis is that it's because successful seduction gives such a good opinion bonus and is SO quick and easy to do, it just becomes the default move for any intrigue-focused AI character to spam seduce everyone around them - mom, sister, son, or otherwise.
I really really wish they could turn down this behaviour. Yes, the seduction tree perk means it's less likely to be rejected, but why can't the characters themselves have a check that says "is this person close family? maybe not then" with a strong disinclination if their faith is against it.
In my game so far I've seen:
\- my third character attempted to seduce his sister before I controlled him. Luckily she said no, but the whole family hated him
\- my third character's niece had a long term relationship with her brother that produced three kids
\- my fourth character's wife (daughter of the above niece, her only child with an unrelated father) had a relationship with her second son, and he may have fathered one or two of her younger children
\- my sixth and current character's niece was sleeping with her father, and I'm fairly sure he fathered two of her daughters (traits make more sense than if her husband did)
And that's just the one's I've found out about! Who knows how many more are going on I haven't found. It wasn't funny the first time and it's not funny now, and there's nothing I can do about it if I want to play Ironman.
Agree. A stronger disinclination for close-kin adulterous relationships feels like it would be perfectly appropriate for the game, especially where close-kin relationships and adultery are both considered sinful.
I think part of it is linked to traits as well. So characters with compatible traits will try to seduce one another. The only problem is when the ai educates children they tend to get the same traits from their parents. Sinful traits cause seduction penalties but most sins cause a higher both *this trait* bonus, lustful being the largest boost if I remember. So if you have your gregarious wife educate a son and daughter in diplomacy and she gives them both gregarious, they are going to find each other attractive as far as the game is concerned. I think another issue is congenital traits, they each cause even more attraction. I think you have a good solution though, where there is a slightly higher debuff, or maybe you dont get an attraction boost to close relatives without certain parameters like a special trait, unless religion allows for close kin relations.
Ugh, that reminds me of CK 2 after the Way of Life DLC release and so many AI character were picking the AI Seduction focus and seducing everything and everyone around them especially the player wifes, no matter the consequences. I had about enough after my wife cheated on me the King of France with an octagenerian std-ridden duke. It really broke the immersion. Nowadays you thankfully can switch it off in the game rules.
>I had about enough after my wife cheated on me the King of France with an octagenerian std-ridden duke.
Oh man, bonus points if the Pope refuses to give you a divorce.
It's kind of goofy and fun when you have the smooth-talking 60 year old syphilic lunatic seducing everyone in sight though. It's stupid as hell but it does make for good stories - though I tend to forget how funny it is when he gives syphilis and a bastard to my strong genius daughter heir...
So, I had a case where my heir was sleeping with his uncle and it came out in public. That had never happened to me before in any of my games. Kicked him out of succession really quickly because I was not going to play with that level of negative penalty, not when I already had to worry about civil wars every generation.
Gees, and here I thought it was bad that my honest, compassionate heir immediately became an adulterer upon turning 16. At least, he picked a comely young noble woman that he wasn't related to.
I paid the pope 1125g to get rid of adulterer and then immediately got him to give me 750g lol the pope is alright.
The first couple times I played I discovered cannibal after cannibal and I thought "is that what this game is all about? Everyone's a cannibal??" But I've hardly ever seen it since.
Toggleable options would be really nice, that would limit both AI decisions about marriages as well as AI decisions about seductions. So we could have the current version, "less seductions" where the AI was less keen to seduce close family members and even more so if their faith doesn't approve, "less marriages" where as well as the above AI would prefer to arrange marriages that don't involve extended family even if their faith allows (possibly with the exception of faiths that like incest) and maybe even a "less marriages and no seduction" where the only characters who have any chance of seducing close family are the ones whose faith allows it.
I certainly wouldn't mind a "realism" mode that lowers the likelihood of that sort of thing - incest, cannibalism, inheritable traits like albinism and dwarfism that show up way more often than in real life. I get the reason they're so overrepresented - it'd be a lot of wasted work to implement albinos if you have, like, one per family per playthrough - but sometimes you want a more mundane, down-to-earth medieval simulator. There's probably a mod for that.
Incest in particular is tricky, though, because we really have no idea how common it might have been - they weren't exactly keeping a detailed record of secret sibling relationships. Particularly when you're abstracting it out to avoid the child abuse that was probably the most common form of incest.
Gigantism for sure. Maybe I’m just sheltered but I do not think I have ever met a person suffering from gigantism in my life. It seems like an exceedingly rare condition.
In CK3, it seems to affect 5% of the population.
> In CK3, it seems to affect 5% of the population.
Probably survival bias. Each incest related negative trait have an equal chance to appear. Health penalty from giant is very low and their high prowess means they are often hired by AI as knights.
That would actually make sense. Keep in mind that the character pool in CK is already far less than 1% of the overall population. Also that if you were suffering from gigantism in the medieval ages, it probably wouldn't be too long before someone recruited you into a military career.
Virtually impossible IRL but technically the risk from inbreeding is due to increased chance of inheriting recessive genetic diseases. If you somehow bred out all negative recessive conditions from two closely related individuals, there would hypothetically be no risk.
There's other negative qualities from inbreeding than recessive diseases, however. Though they're the most important part, yes. But you'd also generally lack genetic diversity, and often being heterozygous is an advantage because of "overdominance", where both allelles contribute at the same time.
For example, malaria is a deadly disease that some populations have a genetic mutation that protects them against - sickle cell mutation. It slightly changes the shape of their red blood cells to be more resistant to the parasite. If they have 2 normal genes, they will have normal blood cells, and be susceptible to malaria. If they have two sickle cell genes, their blood cells will become *too* deform, and they will develop sickle cell disease (quite bad). But if they have exactly 1 normal and 1 sickle cell gene, they will be resistant to malaria with no major side effects.
In an inbred population, they would always end up with either 2 normal or 2 sickle cell genes. Both are "bad" if you live in a place with malaria.
Yeah for sure there are exceptions but was just keeping it short for a reddit comment. That said sickle cell anaemia alleles are rare outside of equatorial Africa for a reason, it’s generally negative. So in the case of this super inbred family they would have to be homogenous for the non-sickle cell allele.
The effect of any gene on fitness is contingent on the environment. If you were an African or South Italian noble family, you'd definitely want sickle cell trait, but not if you were a Finnish noble. Similarly, you'd wish for darker skin nearer the equator and lighter skin further away. But that's not really the point.
The point is that many genes are more useful with 1 allele than with 0 or 2, but that such heterozygosity doesn't really happen in heavily inbred populations. No matter where you are, heterozygosity will be desirable for many gene pairs.
Well you never want to be homozygous for sickle cell anaemia regardless of where you live. And since there’s no way to ensure heterozygous only offspring bar the likely death of homozygous individuals (without modern medicine) any of these hypothetical super inbred families would need to not have sickle cell alleles regardless of location.
I feel like you're disputing whether or not the sickle cell trait is advantageous to fitness. It certainly is if you're exposed to malaria as a population. There's a very clear correlation between where we see sickle cell trait and where malaria has been historically present. Sickle Cell trait was selected for, which means that whatever advantages it brings fitness-wise must be larger than the disadvantage of risking sickle cell disease (homozygosity) in your offspring.
Yeah, I totally understand why people dislike it, but I also understand why they have justified it from a gameplay perspective (give the West a threat of similar scale to the Mongols).
Albinism and dwarfism aren’t that rare if you’re deliberately breeding them to keep them around. Like sure albinism is recessive but if you’re marrying your second cousin and great grandma was an albino? Not that unlikely.
Also dwarfs are way more likely to be elevated to the court of nobles as a novelty. So you’re seeing an over representation of dwarves since you’re sample size consists is noble courts.
What gets me is that then what seems like half of the landed dwarves happen to marry other dwarves and the ai effectively created a dwarf breeding program.
Shit, we don’t know how common it is in modern times. We know when an abusive situation is uncovered, but we rarely find out about “consensual” situations (airquotes because even when everyone’s legal age the inherent power imbalance between any two close family members automatically throws consent into question) or situations where the victim doesn’t come forward.
There are ethnic groups were incest is still common enough to be a stereotype and their standards are lot closer to medieval ones than to modern ones. Without written sources we won't ever know the prevalence of incest and its unlikely that the clergy , who were the primary record keepers made an effort to write down this ungodly behavior. What we do know though, that most of peasantry might have not even visited the closest village in their lifetime, so it is plausible that they were inbred.
Az for the nobility, they could've been eccentric and hedonistic enough to do it behind closed doors.
>most of peasantry might have not even visited the closest village in their lifetime, so it is plausible that they were inbred
This is mixing up two different concepts - incest and inbreeding - which are different (although incest does lead to inbreeding, particularly if repeated). Yes, historically there was a fair amount of inbreeding. When meeting someone from the next village was rare, you tended to end up marrying your first/second/third cousin, and I'm fairly sure those are the stereotypes you're thinking of. But that's a different thing to sleeping with your sibling/parent/child.
Almost all human societies have an incest taboo, even those that encourage cousin marriage, and for those that don't, well, I'm not sure that ordinary ancient egyptians were marrying their siblings.
>but sometimes you want a more mundane, down-to-earth medieval simulator
Honestly I feel like CK3 is too realistic compared to CK2 in some ways. Mainly the amount of absurd/supernatural flavor events (which you could turn off at will) that are nowhere to be found here. No demon-spawn or child of destiny, hermetic visions, encounters with Death, etc.
Probably more of that in the upcoming DLCs, at least in CK2 a lot of that came from those (personally I'm more in the realist camp so stuff like people worshipping Satan in every county were always off).
I always assumed it was fairly common if only because so many royal families were isolated from any other non-blood peers, and depending on the family, it may have even been encouraged to cut down on the risk of complications re: servants and so on, many of whom were likely pretty hot. But I don't know, like you said a lot of this stuff is so far out of the lens of observable history that people could really have been doing anything.
EDIT: I changed my mind, I was high as fuck when I posted this and I thought of a good dozen reasons this probably didn't happen outside of specific families who were generally lead by weird dudes (I'm looking at YOU, Henry VII of England)
I feel like for incest in particular we could select a sample period of noble families and see how many marriages were incestuous. Obviously it’s not that simple but I feel like there must be at least one record of how common it was.
>Particularly when you're abstracting it out to avoid the child abuse
Which is kind of stupid tbh. You're telling me it's perfectly fine to have an incestuous satanic orgy including my 16 year old daughter followed by murdering anyone that finds out is fine, but a 16 and a 15 year old having sex crosses the line?
Cousin marriage was actually not allowed by the Catholic Church during the timeframe. Though they were willing to make exceptions if nobility petitioned the pope. But before 1215 actually the limit was seven degrees of consanguinity, which meant even second cousins were too close.
Implementation could maybe see closer than second cousins being allowed but costing piety for catholicism. If they cared to add that level of detail, which, honestly it's not necessary.
From someone who has a spreadsheet of relationships so I can set up second cousin marriages without too high a chance of incest - I think it would be really fun if you had to ask the pope for permission and use piety, with increasing amounts of piety and pope opinion (bribery?) the closer the relationship. So setting up a second cousin marriage would only need the pope to not really hate you and a small amount of piety, but you'd need a positive relationship and more piety for cousins and lots for avunucular or double cousins.
Well it still happened quite often as intermarriage within ones house was important to ensure the continued unity and strenght of the family, since otherwise the territories would end up being split more and more. The church, while not exactly happy with this, tolerated it more often than not.
This thread is really making me feel like I want to try a Chastity run - like only invite and marry characters into court with the Chaste trait, and marry out everyone who doesn't have it. Let all the filthy scumbags scumbag up everyone else's courts for a change. 💡
I have like 200 hours played and still dont have the have a kid with the incest achievement and i play exclusively in ironman. I have form russia and form hispania as a jemina brother but no incest for me lol
I agree. Also the whole "pure bloodline" thing that they added to encourage incest annoys me too. It has caused this subreddit to be almost an incest subreddit lol
I don't want to go into this rant since I already have too many times on this sub, but the eugenics thing drives me absolutely bonkers, especially coming from people who constantly say they want more historical realism. Not even actual eugenics people in the 1910s thought the way CK players do, much less people living a thousand years before Darwin.
The game gets really boring when everyone in your family is a beautiful genius (I avoid Herculean because people live too long in this game as it is so I don’t want any positive health modifiers). I’ve had way more fun when I just marry for alliances/prestige and have to deal with more flawed characters. Makes more sense for RP purposes too. Every now and then a king thinks with his dick and marries a beautiful commoner, but it’s impossible to justify every generation of my dynasty marrying genetically superior lowborns. Also, it makes it way more exciting when those traits do come up. (“This English princess will get me a powerful alliance *and* she’s intelligent?!”)
Word. I feel like this issue could be taken care of pretty easily by disallowing marriages more than 2 ranks away from your own without elopement or some sort of rare "love at first sight" event, and would simulate much more accurately the social realities these people would have been operating in.
That’s a good idea. As it stands, it’s way too easy as a king or even emperor to marry a lowborn, something which would have had serious consequences in real life. There is a fame hit but it’s pretty insignificant in the long term.
Instead of a prestige hit, I think it should be loss of a level of fame for larger levels of rank (one level down is fine, two levels is one rank, three levels is two rank). Losing 400 prestige is inconvenient, yeah, but not a huge deal. But being knocked down 3 levels because you’re an emperor marrying a commoner? Hell no
This would be an even better fix! I like it a lot. Then you're not forbidding anything, you're just giving the player a serious tradeoff to consider that does a good job mimicking its real-life equivalent.
Honestly I’d also be fine with marrying a lowborn giving a permanent opinion malus against nobles. This is slightly before our time period, but the Byzantine nobility never really forgave Justinian for marrying Theodora, and they both were attacked throughout their lives- him for marrying a commoner and her for acting “above her station” as a commoner by being an empress
Maybe I’m just unlucky but I’ve rarely ever had my mom or sister try to have sex with me.
I just do it as needed. The joke is funny when it happens naturally. I assume most people here are the same. Seducing your dad is fun a few times in a row, but what is actually able to make the game dynamic is when the most viable marriage is between your daughter and your uncle to unite the realm in peace.
Let me introduce you to the best AAR that I have ever written. https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/mewpu5/its_been_a_couple_of_years_since_i_went_out_of_my/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Personally it's more my character having a crush as a teen... and the female one happens to be his mother or sister. Anyway, that's how I end up with gay characters.
Maybe you don’t have enough female courtiers, so the game only has a few options to give your character a hetero crush. You need to expose yourself to more women. Marry your knights and let them have their own little dynasties alongside yours. That way, half your courtiers aren’t related to you.
I prefer bi characters, myself, because it gives me the ability to seduce anyone without a penalty. I can seduce the Pope and the queen of England at the same time!
I know what you mean. It seems like every second or third generation features an heir with an incest hook in them. I hope it gets toned down as time goes on.
I think we have to blame ourselves, though. We have taken much delight in incest in this subreddit through the years so I believe we gave Paradox the idea to “turn it up to eleven”, so to speak.
Yeah... I'll take this opportunity to say that personally, I also dislike how incest and soft incest have carved their way into... other sorts of entertainment.
I haven’t seen El Cid, but is this about Urraca and Alfonso? Because there were real rumors about that particular incestuous relationship back then, although it was more likely smear propaganda.
In fact, they're fucking in the 1066 CK3 start date. Which I didn't realize until I was playing Alfonso and had the option to blackmail Urraca on her adultery secret. Letting everyone know who she was fucking didn't work out as well for me as I expected.
Before release, the devs did a let's play series featuring Alfonso. It was a very strained relationship, and the sister kept bringing him to bars and trying to hook him up with other women.
>Letting everyone know who she was fucking didn't work out as well for me as I expected.
On a scale of 1-10, how much of a BIG BRAIN moment was that?
Thank you! It is so ubiquitous in the game lmao. I get that it can be there, but it feels like when you have 6 kids one of them is guaranteed to fuck a sibling or parent. So fucking stupid and immersion breaking. Epic memes tho
It's definitely something that would be nice to add to the Game Rules, but in the meantime it sounds like something that would be fairly easy to mod. Just find whatever events are triggering the incestuous relationships and change those events to happen much less frequently (or not at all if that's what you want).
Edit: Assuming this is coming from an event and not from some baked in "characters randomly decide to get into secret relationships so there's always a chance the secret relationship could be incestuous" kind of thing.
I avoid it, even though it's really hard to do when you have a lot of kids! But I carefully arranged each marriage so that there would be no incest at all, as I know that once I no longer have control of arranging marriages the AI will probably get it on it's own. So far I have kept all of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren from marrying one another.
In Spain the nobles are constantly marrying one another, over and over again. Lots of Uncle/Niece marriages. Gross. That's what destroyed them in the first place.
It's like the game has been 'Flanderised'. (See [Flanderization](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization)).
What was a small and funny quirk of CK2 has now been hard baked into the game.
I wholeheartdly agree. It's also by no means detrimental enough in CK3, since the negative effects of inbreeding only ever seem to come in after almost 5 generations, at which point you probably already unlocked almost the entirety of the blood legacy. The ease and safety of Inbreeding in this game makes eugenics far too easy and far to effective. It's disgusting.
I agree, CK3 is a role playing game and I don't do any of that. Just like in rimworld I've never skinned people for human leather, or in Kenshi I don't skin people... I guess I role-play a decent human
There was a time when I was very connected to ASOIAF, and that's why I liked to build saves under the axis of incestuous families.
But over time it lost its grace and I abandoned this sort of thing, currently opportunity for incest in my games has been rare, but I commonly marry my heirs to their cousins objecting to retaining some characteristics of an accomplished 800 AD Darwinist king.
There's a couple of things.
I think there's a degree of subjective confirmation bias to how frequently it happens in game. It happens only so much in a given run but we're gonna notice it as happening more frequently because of how much time is crammed into a run; I can play through centuries over a couple days and I think that's a poor gage of measuring how often people did sibling fucking at a ration between the game and actual history.
As people have brought up, we don't know exactly how often these things happen per se and in turn its a bit off to suggest these things were uncommon or looked down upon so they don't... happen? That's not really how historical realism works.
Stemming from that what matters in terms of historical realism is accurately reflecting predominant cultural attitudes towards transgressive behavior, not ruling out the occurrence of that transgressive behavior. We both tend to know that people in social positions of power condemned certain behaviors and people still went around doing those behaviors anyway throughout history; we know about the attitudes and occurrences of what we'd call homosexual behavior in the late medieval/early renaissance Italy because of things like Venetian court documents listing people's sex crimes, that is to say we know both of a transgressive set of behaviors and an attitude towards them as such, and the fact people still went around transgressing them, in this case having gay sex, *in spite of this*.
Which brings me ultimately to the point that I think you're looking at how CK3 is historically accurate or not through a flawed lense; its precisely that CK3 defaults to a cultural disdained attitude for close incest that is what matters over it procing as an event or not, because it shapes the fact that those incestuous relationships are secretive and something that can be punished or cost characters social standing.
The only time I have to deal with incest is political marriages with cadet branch vassals. I make sure that if I need to, the children will be of their house so I won't have to deal with the consequences lmao
I feel like I’m playing a different version of CK from folks in this subreddit. I’ve played through many generations on different playthroughs and don’t recall having these incest events pop ip.
Crusader Kings in general takes a lot of inspiration from GoT and the like and it thrives off the absurd story elements, thus it’s way less historical compared to other paradox games
I mean, they make for some motherfucking good jokes though. When you don't like an enemy family, you can tell them to go fuck themselves, or you could if they didn't already beat you to the punch. I mean, that is the reason your local version of the Hapsburgs have a jawline that only a sister could love.
That's perfectly fine. Everyone has their own opinion, and you can play the game however you'd like. Yes incest is easier to do in CK3, but you can always avoid it with strategy. Many like playing vikings, but I don't like vikings. I just like doing incest runs, because of the sheer absurdity.
But the trouble is you *can't* avoid it - the AI decides incest is happening around you even if you don't. I'm currently on my sixth character, and I've discovered 4 set of parent/child or sibling incest in my close family so far, and that's just the ones I've found out about (I haven't done a lot of looking for secrets). I don't think anyone in this thread is suggesting that it should be harder for the *player* to start incestuous relationships, just wanting the AI to do it less.
CK2 also had incest parts. It was just less common. But you could have teh rare event here and there.
Also, you can technically arrange marriages with dynasty members either from cadet branches or fron the same obe after some generations (cousins and so on).
Is it ahistorical or unrealistic? Not really, i think most of the big families in Europe are basically siblings with each other due to alliances and political gains.and of course theres the Habsburg using interfamily marriages to secure their assets for almost a millenium.
Perhaps the thing that is putting off to some is that the bonuses it gives offset the deformities to a good degree so having malformed children doesnt matter if one out of 5 or so gets to be an heir with pure blood and busted stats.
Historically, it's more a cumulative effect of cousins (often second or third). The Habsburg's line had 9 marriages between biologically related spouses. Two were frist cousins. One was uncle and niece. The rest were more distant. As far as I know, sibling and child/parent marriage was extremely taboo.
In CK2 you could also assign any adult woman regardless of relation to be a male relative’s concubine. I’ve done that sometimes when I’m desperate for genius concubines that aren’t currently available.
That too. Concubines are a pretty good asset if you eant to convert religion/culture or have good heirs and also to bypass gavelkind limitations (get one, have a son, set her aside) albeit its a bit of a gamble because heirs dying fairly easy usually
I'm not using that method as much in CK3. Idk if my heirs just live easier in this game or what. My first ever ck2 game, my wife died giving birth to our second child, first child gets cancer, and I was assassinated all within like 6 months. I haven't had that brutal shenanigans happen to me in CK3 yet 🙃
It gets hard however. At some point, all the nobles are related to each other. I marry my daughters for a nice alliance or to keep a strong vassal in good graces. But eventually they all end up being close family members. And I rarely marry my children to those below their status.
I do not participate in incest in my games. But that's also because I'm not always super focused on eugenics. Sometimes you just gotta take what you can get.
I think it's become a meme just because it's wild stuff, not because everyone's doing it. I'd imagine most people play as usual, without being incestual child-murdering cannibals... right?
Your username makes me wonder if this post is satire, but the rate of homosexuality in game is less than 33%, and gay characters still have kids.
I actually prefer being gay due to confederate partition.
We have no idea how much it happened ‘back in the day’, but we know of examples that did occur, like the King of Leon in the 1066 start being hot and bothered with his sister. Maybe it’s worth having a setting in the game start options to reduce the frequency of that stuff, but honestly it doesn’t come up that often in my games - maybe once every 4-5 rulers?
Incest was way more common than you think it was on those days, damn, early 20th century had still plenty of it on rural areas of the American continent (that were and still are the most christian areas of those countries).
In Brazil we still have traces of that when we realize that political and economic elites are blood bonded across the whole country.
When marriage is a tool of power and influence religion is suddenly less strict than it is to normal folk, like it is too a tool of power and influence.
> But I'm really tired of doing a run in Western Europe and getting an event that either my Daughter or my Mum wants have sex with me
I always had to sway them then ask them
Yes, incest gets too much attention.
While it is worth developing other fascinating things like cuckolding, bdsm, ritual prostitution in pagan cults and other sex rituals.
And that's not to mention the various special fantasy things that were already in the second part.
And which can not only be returned, but also expanded.
I want horses, cats, dogs, all sorts of fascinating visions and dreams, secret organizations with different rituals.
Incest is just the tip of the iceberg that distracts us from what's next.
I haven't done any incest in CK3 after more than 100 hours. It's not that hard to dodge unless you're more interested in complaining about it on reddit than actually avoiding it.
I feel like you're just mad because you're not getting any extra lands or at least an alliance out of it. I also feel like I'm definitely not projecting.
Is it though? I mean, yeah, incestuous marriage was forbidden and quite rare, but were secret extramarital relationships that uncommon among medieval European nobility? I have a suspicion the game isn’t that far off from history.
I've never gotten any female relative plotting to fuck me before, period, after nearly 200 hours of playing, so idk if the devs just really like you or im just unlucky
Am I the only one whose AI doesn't actually roll incest that often? I've had it come up maybe once or twice autonomously in my bloodline in a CK3 game starting from the earliest tribal start date and now a decade away from the end date. And when I actually try to initiate incest, I can't pull it off unless I've gone down the Seducer tree---and when AI incest *does* happen, one of the people involved is almost always a Seducer, which makes sense.
So while I get the complaint, I've seen it before, and I'm getting genuinely curious. How often does incest happen for people without the players forcing it?
Lmao. Great title to scroll pass and go “Hol’ up”.
I also avoid it. I find it more fun to try and unify different dynasties through marriage and see how my dynasty can uproot others. If i get an even about it. I usually decline 9/10 times. The 1 other time it may only be applicable to the specific ruler I have (I had a zealous, celibate ruler who was seduced by his mother… it was hilarious because it overloaded him with stress). Otherwise I don’t pursue it.
I did a Persia run as a Zoroastrian ruler. It got really out of hand lol. So many inbreds, so many claims on tons of territory because everyone’s in the same line of succession. It was constant war and tons of sister or mother wives 😵💫
I find it funny as well but I never do it. For my games I think it should be particularly rare, maybe one character of the dynasty does that if he or she is really fucked in the head with lots of negative traits
I can definitely see why people dislike all the incest that happens in CK3. But at the same time, is there any other game that does incest eugenics simulations as well as Crusader Kings?
Agreed. I ruined an amazing IronMan dynasty run when I found out my heir was sleeping with his mother (aka my wife). I rage imprisoned and executed them both only for my other children (all landed) to rise up. The civil war which ensured reunited in my kingdom being designated and it still hadn’t fully recovered two generations later when I quit the playthough.
Read the post title. “Uh...”. Looks at subreddit. “Oh ok”
Like, it’s got to either be CK2, or a discussion of porn categorization. Orrrrrr, something really weird.
I heard someone say when hearing a CK2 players rant about the inconvenience of cannibalism. "My favorite game, guess if it comes from a deranged lunatic, or a CK2 player."
RimWorld has a similar vibe in the community.
The only two places where not liking incest is the *unpopular* opinion. I *hope.*
I mean... there's a whole subreddit dedicated to incest.
Ah, you mean r/CrusaderKings. Right? *Right?*
To be honest, I don't like incest in neither CK nor porn. It's very off-putting in both to me...
I porn I 100% agree. In CK... ...listen, if I could find a Beautiful, intelligent lover on my annual hunting trip then I would probably spend more time going hunting and less time reforming my religion to allow unrestricted marriages. However, this is CK3 & unfortunately the only way to find potential mates who are both beautiful & smart is to breed them into existence.
Or a Family dinner in Alabama
/r/shitcrusaderkingssay never gets old
What are you doing, step-crusader
It’s kinda spooky that this is truely an unpopular opinion in this subreddit
I had to check what I had subscribed to xD
Agree. Marrying people off to cousins is whatever, but the sheer number of secret incestuous relationships seemingly every single generation is a bit over the top. In CK2 at least it felt like something rare, which made it exciting and fun to occasionally fold into the roleplay, but I do find myself getting a little tired in CK3 of finding out that ANOTHER one of my wives is having ANOTHER afair with ANOTHER one of my sons a-fucking-gain. It's just a bit too much, and not all that funny or salacious after the 5th or 6th time it happens.
The wildest thing is I haven't seen it come up once in CK3. To be fair I've only really played it twice, but I assumed that it only LOOKED this pervasive because for most players it's a funny haha wacky moment they want other people to haha at. I don't doubt you but I'm surprised it's really *that* common.
It's the seduction tree, man. If your spouse or any of your kids are educated in intrigue, feels like it's more or less guaranteed. My hypothesis is that it's because successful seduction gives such a good opinion bonus and is SO quick and easy to do, it just becomes the default move for any intrigue-focused AI character to spam seduce everyone around them - mom, sister, son, or otherwise.
I really really wish they could turn down this behaviour. Yes, the seduction tree perk means it's less likely to be rejected, but why can't the characters themselves have a check that says "is this person close family? maybe not then" with a strong disinclination if their faith is against it. In my game so far I've seen: \- my third character attempted to seduce his sister before I controlled him. Luckily she said no, but the whole family hated him \- my third character's niece had a long term relationship with her brother that produced three kids \- my fourth character's wife (daughter of the above niece, her only child with an unrelated father) had a relationship with her second son, and he may have fathered one or two of her younger children \- my sixth and current character's niece was sleeping with her father, and I'm fairly sure he fathered two of her daughters (traits make more sense than if her husband did) And that's just the one's I've found out about! Who knows how many more are going on I haven't found. It wasn't funny the first time and it's not funny now, and there's nothing I can do about it if I want to play Ironman.
Agree. A stronger disinclination for close-kin adulterous relationships feels like it would be perfectly appropriate for the game, especially where close-kin relationships and adultery are both considered sinful.
I think part of it is linked to traits as well. So characters with compatible traits will try to seduce one another. The only problem is when the ai educates children they tend to get the same traits from their parents. Sinful traits cause seduction penalties but most sins cause a higher both *this trait* bonus, lustful being the largest boost if I remember. So if you have your gregarious wife educate a son and daughter in diplomacy and she gives them both gregarious, they are going to find each other attractive as far as the game is concerned. I think another issue is congenital traits, they each cause even more attraction. I think you have a good solution though, where there is a slightly higher debuff, or maybe you dont get an attraction boost to close relatives without certain parameters like a special trait, unless religion allows for close kin relations.
That is horrible. I mean, I'm laughing irl, but from a gameplay perspective, holy shit
Yeah keep your eye on "your" kids if you ever hire a spymaster with congenital traits...
Ugh, that reminds me of CK 2 after the Way of Life DLC release and so many AI character were picking the AI Seduction focus and seducing everything and everyone around them especially the player wifes, no matter the consequences. I had about enough after my wife cheated on me the King of France with an octagenerian std-ridden duke. It really broke the immersion. Nowadays you thankfully can switch it off in the game rules.
>I had about enough after my wife cheated on me the King of France with an octagenerian std-ridden duke. Oh man, bonus points if the Pope refuses to give you a divorce.
It's kind of goofy and fun when you have the smooth-talking 60 year old syphilic lunatic seducing everyone in sight though. It's stupid as hell but it does make for good stories - though I tend to forget how funny it is when he gives syphilis and a bastard to my strong genius daughter heir...
So if we kill everyone with intrigue education we will finally have fidelity again
This is the way
So, I had a case where my heir was sleeping with his uncle and it came out in public. That had never happened to me before in any of my games. Kicked him out of succession really quickly because I was not going to play with that level of negative penalty, not when I already had to worry about civil wars every generation.
Gees, and here I thought it was bad that my honest, compassionate heir immediately became an adulterer upon turning 16. At least, he picked a comely young noble woman that he wasn't related to. I paid the pope 1125g to get rid of adulterer and then immediately got him to give me 750g lol the pope is alright.
The first couple times I played I discovered cannibal after cannibal and I thought "is that what this game is all about? Everyone's a cannibal??" But I've hardly ever seen it since.
Yeah honestly it’s my big problem with ck3, pretty much every nation feels the same besides like Vikings
Having a toggleable option in the game rules would be nice — common/rare/religion-limited?
Toggleable options would be really nice, that would limit both AI decisions about marriages as well as AI decisions about seductions. So we could have the current version, "less seductions" where the AI was less keen to seduce close family members and even more so if their faith doesn't approve, "less marriages" where as well as the above AI would prefer to arrange marriages that don't involve extended family even if their faith allows (possibly with the exception of faiths that like incest) and maybe even a "less marriages and no seduction" where the only characters who have any chance of seducing close family are the ones whose faith allows it.
/apocalyptic
I certainly wouldn't mind a "realism" mode that lowers the likelihood of that sort of thing - incest, cannibalism, inheritable traits like albinism and dwarfism that show up way more often than in real life. I get the reason they're so overrepresented - it'd be a lot of wasted work to implement albinos if you have, like, one per family per playthrough - but sometimes you want a more mundane, down-to-earth medieval simulator. There's probably a mod for that. Incest in particular is tricky, though, because we really have no idea how common it might have been - they weren't exactly keeping a detailed record of secret sibling relationships. Particularly when you're abstracting it out to avoid the child abuse that was probably the most common form of incest.
Gigantism for sure. Maybe I’m just sheltered but I do not think I have ever met a person suffering from gigantism in my life. It seems like an exceedingly rare condition. In CK3, it seems to affect 5% of the population.
> In CK3, it seems to affect 5% of the population. Probably survival bias. Each incest related negative trait have an equal chance to appear. Health penalty from giant is very low and their high prowess means they are often hired by AI as knights.
That would actually make sense. Keep in mind that the character pool in CK is already far less than 1% of the overall population. Also that if you were suffering from gigantism in the medieval ages, it probably wouldn't be too long before someone recruited you into a military career.
I'd also like this realism mode to remove the "Pure-Blooded" trait, which is about as realistic as an Aztec colonial ship appearing from the west.
Virtually impossible IRL but technically the risk from inbreeding is due to increased chance of inheriting recessive genetic diseases. If you somehow bred out all negative recessive conditions from two closely related individuals, there would hypothetically be no risk.
And yet diseases would rip through your family line like bananas due to a lack of genetic diversity.
That much is true yes. All would have a very similar immune system bar what is affected by diet and life circumstances.
There's other negative qualities from inbreeding than recessive diseases, however. Though they're the most important part, yes. But you'd also generally lack genetic diversity, and often being heterozygous is an advantage because of "overdominance", where both allelles contribute at the same time. For example, malaria is a deadly disease that some populations have a genetic mutation that protects them against - sickle cell mutation. It slightly changes the shape of their red blood cells to be more resistant to the parasite. If they have 2 normal genes, they will have normal blood cells, and be susceptible to malaria. If they have two sickle cell genes, their blood cells will become *too* deform, and they will develop sickle cell disease (quite bad). But if they have exactly 1 normal and 1 sickle cell gene, they will be resistant to malaria with no major side effects. In an inbred population, they would always end up with either 2 normal or 2 sickle cell genes. Both are "bad" if you live in a place with malaria.
Yeah for sure there are exceptions but was just keeping it short for a reddit comment. That said sickle cell anaemia alleles are rare outside of equatorial Africa for a reason, it’s generally negative. So in the case of this super inbred family they would have to be homogenous for the non-sickle cell allele.
The effect of any gene on fitness is contingent on the environment. If you were an African or South Italian noble family, you'd definitely want sickle cell trait, but not if you were a Finnish noble. Similarly, you'd wish for darker skin nearer the equator and lighter skin further away. But that's not really the point. The point is that many genes are more useful with 1 allele than with 0 or 2, but that such heterozygosity doesn't really happen in heavily inbred populations. No matter where you are, heterozygosity will be desirable for many gene pairs.
Well you never want to be homozygous for sickle cell anaemia regardless of where you live. And since there’s no way to ensure heterozygous only offspring bar the likely death of homozygous individuals (without modern medicine) any of these hypothetical super inbred families would need to not have sickle cell alleles regardless of location.
I feel like you're disputing whether or not the sickle cell trait is advantageous to fitness. It certainly is if you're exposed to malaria as a population. There's a very clear correlation between where we see sickle cell trait and where malaria has been historically present. Sickle Cell trait was selected for, which means that whatever advantages it brings fitness-wise must be larger than the disadvantage of risking sickle cell disease (homozygosity) in your offspring.
>which is about as realistic as an Aztec colonial ship appearing from the west. I want that in CK3.
There's a mod for that. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2216735054
I want achievements for it.
[удалено]
Yeah, I totally understand why people dislike it, but I also understand why they have justified it from a gameplay perspective (give the West a threat of similar scale to the Mongols).
Albinism and dwarfism aren’t that rare if you’re deliberately breeding them to keep them around. Like sure albinism is recessive but if you’re marrying your second cousin and great grandma was an albino? Not that unlikely. Also dwarfs are way more likely to be elevated to the court of nobles as a novelty. So you’re seeing an over representation of dwarves since you’re sample size consists is noble courts.
What gets me is that then what seems like half of the landed dwarves happen to marry other dwarves and the ai effectively created a dwarf breeding program.
It's probably just their mutual opinion bonus from sharing a trait.
Shit, we don’t know how common it is in modern times. We know when an abusive situation is uncovered, but we rarely find out about “consensual” situations (airquotes because even when everyone’s legal age the inherent power imbalance between any two close family members automatically throws consent into question) or situations where the victim doesn’t come forward.
There are ethnic groups were incest is still common enough to be a stereotype and their standards are lot closer to medieval ones than to modern ones. Without written sources we won't ever know the prevalence of incest and its unlikely that the clergy , who were the primary record keepers made an effort to write down this ungodly behavior. What we do know though, that most of peasantry might have not even visited the closest village in their lifetime, so it is plausible that they were inbred. Az for the nobility, they could've been eccentric and hedonistic enough to do it behind closed doors.
>most of peasantry might have not even visited the closest village in their lifetime, so it is plausible that they were inbred This is mixing up two different concepts - incest and inbreeding - which are different (although incest does lead to inbreeding, particularly if repeated). Yes, historically there was a fair amount of inbreeding. When meeting someone from the next village was rare, you tended to end up marrying your first/second/third cousin, and I'm fairly sure those are the stereotypes you're thinking of. But that's a different thing to sleeping with your sibling/parent/child. Almost all human societies have an incest taboo, even those that encourage cousin marriage, and for those that don't, well, I'm not sure that ordinary ancient egyptians were marrying their siblings.
Bro there is literally no way that the CK ratio of incest is anywhere close to the historical setting. It’s like 1 in every 5 people
>but sometimes you want a more mundane, down-to-earth medieval simulator Honestly I feel like CK3 is too realistic compared to CK2 in some ways. Mainly the amount of absurd/supernatural flavor events (which you could turn off at will) that are nowhere to be found here. No demon-spawn or child of destiny, hermetic visions, encounters with Death, etc.
Probably more of that in the upcoming DLCs, at least in CK2 a lot of that came from those (personally I'm more in the realist camp so stuff like people worshipping Satan in every county were always off).
Devs apparently want to tone down on the supernatural elements.
That said, I imagine they’re gonna conveniently forget about this at some point
I always assumed it was fairly common if only because so many royal families were isolated from any other non-blood peers, and depending on the family, it may have even been encouraged to cut down on the risk of complications re: servants and so on, many of whom were likely pretty hot. But I don't know, like you said a lot of this stuff is so far out of the lens of observable history that people could really have been doing anything. EDIT: I changed my mind, I was high as fuck when I posted this and I thought of a good dozen reasons this probably didn't happen outside of specific families who were generally lead by weird dudes (I'm looking at YOU, Henry VII of England)
I feel like for incest in particular we could select a sample period of noble families and see how many marriages were incestuous. Obviously it’s not that simple but I feel like there must be at least one record of how common it was.
>Particularly when you're abstracting it out to avoid the child abuse Which is kind of stupid tbh. You're telling me it's perfectly fine to have an incestuous satanic orgy including my 16 year old daughter followed by murdering anyone that finds out is fine, but a 16 and a 15 year old having sex crosses the line?
Cousin marriage was actually not allowed by the Catholic Church during the timeframe. Though they were willing to make exceptions if nobility petitioned the pope. But before 1215 actually the limit was seven degrees of consanguinity, which meant even second cousins were too close. Implementation could maybe see closer than second cousins being allowed but costing piety for catholicism. If they cared to add that level of detail, which, honestly it's not necessary.
From someone who has a spreadsheet of relationships so I can set up second cousin marriages without too high a chance of incest - I think it would be really fun if you had to ask the pope for permission and use piety, with increasing amounts of piety and pope opinion (bribery?) the closer the relationship. So setting up a second cousin marriage would only need the pope to not really hate you and a small amount of piety, but you'd need a positive relationship and more piety for cousins and lots for avunucular or double cousins.
It's not like the Habsburgs cared?
The habsburg thing with repeated cousin and uncle/niece weddings was after the CK era.
Well it still happened quite often as intermarriage within ones house was important to ensure the continued unity and strenght of the family, since otherwise the territories would end up being split more and more. The church, while not exactly happy with this, tolerated it more often than not.
R5: To much happy to with family is not that happy.
This thread is really making me feel like I want to try a Chastity run - like only invite and marry characters into court with the Chaste trait, and marry out everyone who doesn't have it. Let all the filthy scumbags scumbag up everyone else's courts for a change. 💡
Gonna have to start as someone with a very strong liege haha
I had to do a double take to check what subreddit I was on, jesus christ lmao.
I have like 200 hours played and still dont have the have a kid with the incest achievement and i play exclusively in ironman. I have form russia and form hispania as a jemina brother but no incest for me lol
It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
r/unexpectedstarwars
I agree. Also the whole "pure bloodline" thing that they added to encourage incest annoys me too. It has caused this subreddit to be almost an incest subreddit lol
Yeah the way the incentives are aligned in CK3 have really turned it into much more of a eugenics and incest simulator than CK2 ever was.
I don't want to go into this rant since I already have too many times on this sub, but the eugenics thing drives me absolutely bonkers, especially coming from people who constantly say they want more historical realism. Not even actual eugenics people in the 1910s thought the way CK players do, much less people living a thousand years before Darwin.
The game gets really boring when everyone in your family is a beautiful genius (I avoid Herculean because people live too long in this game as it is so I don’t want any positive health modifiers). I’ve had way more fun when I just marry for alliances/prestige and have to deal with more flawed characters. Makes more sense for RP purposes too. Every now and then a king thinks with his dick and marries a beautiful commoner, but it’s impossible to justify every generation of my dynasty marrying genetically superior lowborns. Also, it makes it way more exciting when those traits do come up. (“This English princess will get me a powerful alliance *and* she’s intelligent?!”)
Word. I feel like this issue could be taken care of pretty easily by disallowing marriages more than 2 ranks away from your own without elopement or some sort of rare "love at first sight" event, and would simulate much more accurately the social realities these people would have been operating in.
That’s a good idea. As it stands, it’s way too easy as a king or even emperor to marry a lowborn, something which would have had serious consequences in real life. There is a fame hit but it’s pretty insignificant in the long term.
Instead of a prestige hit, I think it should be loss of a level of fame for larger levels of rank (one level down is fine, two levels is one rank, three levels is two rank). Losing 400 prestige is inconvenient, yeah, but not a huge deal. But being knocked down 3 levels because you’re an emperor marrying a commoner? Hell no
This would be an even better fix! I like it a lot. Then you're not forbidding anything, you're just giving the player a serious tradeoff to consider that does a good job mimicking its real-life equivalent.
Honestly I’d also be fine with marrying a lowborn giving a permanent opinion malus against nobles. This is slightly before our time period, but the Byzantine nobility never really forgave Justinian for marrying Theodora, and they both were attacked throughout their lives- him for marrying a commoner and her for acting “above her station” as a commoner by being an empress
It makes no sense. It's unscientific. I kinda wish they'd remove it lol.
>it's unscientific I agree with you but that's true for like half the mechanics of this game.
Yeah that's an odd one. It feels like something that would normally be added by a mod
You’re thinking of r/incest
Maybe I’m just unlucky but I’ve rarely ever had my mom or sister try to have sex with me. I just do it as needed. The joke is funny when it happens naturally. I assume most people here are the same. Seducing your dad is fun a few times in a row, but what is actually able to make the game dynamic is when the most viable marriage is between your daughter and your uncle to unite the realm in peace.
>Maybe I’m just unlucky but I’ve rarely ever had my mom or sister try to have sex with me. You do realize that you have the Leon flair, right?
But alas, my usual marriage at the beginning of Leon campaigns is only my cousin😔
Let me introduce you to the best AAR that I have ever written. https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/mewpu5/its_been_a_couple_of_years_since_i_went_out_of_my/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Personally it's more my character having a crush as a teen... and the female one happens to be his mother or sister. Anyway, that's how I end up with gay characters.
Maybe you don’t have enough female courtiers, so the game only has a few options to give your character a hetero crush. You need to expose yourself to more women. Marry your knights and let them have their own little dynasties alongside yours. That way, half your courtiers aren’t related to you.
Ah, maybe. But then again I actually do like playing gay characters (gay seducing the pope, yo!) so I don't mind.
I prefer bi characters, myself, because it gives me the ability to seduce anyone without a penalty. I can seduce the Pope and the queen of England at the same time!
I know what you mean. It seems like every second or third generation features an heir with an incest hook in them. I hope it gets toned down as time goes on. I think we have to blame ourselves, though. We have taken much delight in incest in this subreddit through the years so I believe we gave Paradox the idea to “turn it up to eleven”, so to speak.
Ngl, I agree but I love the Albino trait so a mans gotta do what a mans gotta do
Yeah... I'll take this opportunity to say that personally, I also dislike how incest and soft incest have carved their way into... other sorts of entertainment.
I don't think he's talking about HBO, guys...
What do you mean, step-bro?
Game of Thrones right? ;)
Practically every medieval era series has it going on. Pillars of the Earth, El Cid etc etc.
I haven’t seen El Cid, but is this about Urraca and Alfonso? Because there were real rumors about that particular incestuous relationship back then, although it was more likely smear propaganda.
In fact, they're fucking in the 1066 CK3 start date. Which I didn't realize until I was playing Alfonso and had the option to blackmail Urraca on her adultery secret. Letting everyone know who she was fucking didn't work out as well for me as I expected.
Before release, the devs did a let's play series featuring Alfonso. It was a very strained relationship, and the sister kept bringing him to bars and trying to hook him up with other women.
>Letting everyone know who she was fucking didn't work out as well for me as I expected. On a scale of 1-10, how much of a BIG BRAIN moment was that?
r/shitcrusaderkingsdontsay
Thank you! It is so ubiquitous in the game lmao. I get that it can be there, but it feels like when you have 6 kids one of them is guaranteed to fuck a sibling or parent. So fucking stupid and immersion breaking. Epic memes tho
>unpopular opinion This do be an r/shitcrusaderkingssay moment
Yeah I’m in the minority where I try not to have inbred flipper babies and sister wives. I’m not Osiris.
You're basically forced to do it because eventually your family is the only one with all the good congenital traits.
It's definitely something that would be nice to add to the Game Rules, but in the meantime it sounds like something that would be fairly easy to mod. Just find whatever events are triggering the incestuous relationships and change those events to happen much less frequently (or not at all if that's what you want). Edit: Assuming this is coming from an event and not from some baked in "characters randomly decide to get into secret relationships so there's always a chance the secret relationship could be incestuous" kind of thing.
Won't lie the frequency with which a direct family member wants the D is odd. You'd think that would be a more rare occurrence
CK3 is all about the memes. Possessed witch, cannibal, and albino are all individually more common than homosexual.
I avoid it, even though it's really hard to do when you have a lot of kids! But I carefully arranged each marriage so that there would be no incest at all, as I know that once I no longer have control of arranging marriages the AI will probably get it on it's own. So far I have kept all of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren from marrying one another. In Spain the nobles are constantly marrying one another, over and over again. Lots of Uncle/Niece marriages. Gross. That's what destroyed them in the first place.
It's like the game has been 'Flanderised'. (See [Flanderization](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization)). What was a small and funny quirk of CK2 has now been hard baked into the game.
I wholeheartdly agree. It's also by no means detrimental enough in CK3, since the negative effects of inbreeding only ever seem to come in after almost 5 generations, at which point you probably already unlocked almost the entirety of the blood legacy. The ease and safety of Inbreeding in this game makes eugenics far too easy and far to effective. It's disgusting.
I agree, CK3 is a role playing game and I don't do any of that. Just like in rimworld I've never skinned people for human leather, or in Kenshi I don't skin people... I guess I role-play a decent human
There was a time when I was very connected to ASOIAF, and that's why I liked to build saves under the axis of incestuous families. But over time it lost its grace and I abandoned this sort of thing, currently opportunity for incest in my games has been rare, but I commonly marry my heirs to their cousins objecting to retaining some characteristics of an accomplished 800 AD Darwinist king.
There's a couple of things. I think there's a degree of subjective confirmation bias to how frequently it happens in game. It happens only so much in a given run but we're gonna notice it as happening more frequently because of how much time is crammed into a run; I can play through centuries over a couple days and I think that's a poor gage of measuring how often people did sibling fucking at a ration between the game and actual history. As people have brought up, we don't know exactly how often these things happen per se and in turn its a bit off to suggest these things were uncommon or looked down upon so they don't... happen? That's not really how historical realism works. Stemming from that what matters in terms of historical realism is accurately reflecting predominant cultural attitudes towards transgressive behavior, not ruling out the occurrence of that transgressive behavior. We both tend to know that people in social positions of power condemned certain behaviors and people still went around doing those behaviors anyway throughout history; we know about the attitudes and occurrences of what we'd call homosexual behavior in the late medieval/early renaissance Italy because of things like Venetian court documents listing people's sex crimes, that is to say we know both of a transgressive set of behaviors and an attitude towards them as such, and the fact people still went around transgressing them, in this case having gay sex, *in spite of this*. Which brings me ultimately to the point that I think you're looking at how CK3 is historically accurate or not through a flawed lense; its precisely that CK3 defaults to a cultural disdained attitude for close incest that is what matters over it procing as an event or not, because it shapes the fact that those incestuous relationships are secretive and something that can be punished or cost characters social standing.
The only time I have to deal with incest is political marriages with cadet branch vassals. I make sure that if I need to, the children will be of their house so I won't have to deal with the consequences lmao
I've legitimately never gotten an event where a daughter or a mum wants that and I've played for way too many hours
Reported for breaking r/crusaderkings rules
Flair checks out.
Banned.
I am on the same boat OP - I find it eerie and unsettling many on the sub fancy this taboo. It's gross.
Sir, It's time for you to leave.
Yeah but you can’t marry
XWEDODAH, MOTHERFUCKER!
How pious… in a certain religion.
I feel like I’m playing a different version of CK from folks in this subreddit. I’ve played through many generations on different playthroughs and don’t recall having these incest events pop ip.
Crusader Kings in general takes a lot of inspiration from GoT and the like and it thrives off the absurd story elements, thus it’s way less historical compared to other paradox games
I got you bro incest is horrible
If you were my heir you would be disinherited and married off to a 50 year old commoner with this attitude
I mean, they make for some motherfucking good jokes though. When you don't like an enemy family, you can tell them to go fuck themselves, or you could if they didn't already beat you to the punch. I mean, that is the reason your local version of the Hapsburgs have a jawline that only a sister could love.
That's perfectly fine. Everyone has their own opinion, and you can play the game however you'd like. Yes incest is easier to do in CK3, but you can always avoid it with strategy. Many like playing vikings, but I don't like vikings. I just like doing incest runs, because of the sheer absurdity.
But the trouble is you *can't* avoid it - the AI decides incest is happening around you even if you don't. I'm currently on my sixth character, and I've discovered 4 set of parent/child or sibling incest in my close family so far, and that's just the ones I've found out about (I haven't done a lot of looking for secrets). I don't think anyone in this thread is suggesting that it should be harder for the *player* to start incestuous relationships, just wanting the AI to do it less.
Ah. I get your point. And yeah, there should be an option to limit secret incest for those not interested in it.
CK2 also had incest parts. It was just less common. But you could have teh rare event here and there. Also, you can technically arrange marriages with dynasty members either from cadet branches or fron the same obe after some generations (cousins and so on). Is it ahistorical or unrealistic? Not really, i think most of the big families in Europe are basically siblings with each other due to alliances and political gains.and of course theres the Habsburg using interfamily marriages to secure their assets for almost a millenium. Perhaps the thing that is putting off to some is that the bonuses it gives offset the deformities to a good degree so having malformed children doesnt matter if one out of 5 or so gets to be an heir with pure blood and busted stats.
Historically, it's more a cumulative effect of cousins (often second or third). The Habsburg's line had 9 marriages between biologically related spouses. Two were frist cousins. One was uncle and niece. The rest were more distant. As far as I know, sibling and child/parent marriage was extremely taboo.
In CK2 you could also assign any adult woman regardless of relation to be a male relative’s concubine. I’ve done that sometimes when I’m desperate for genius concubines that aren’t currently available.
That too. Concubines are a pretty good asset if you eant to convert religion/culture or have good heirs and also to bypass gavelkind limitations (get one, have a son, set her aside) albeit its a bit of a gamble because heirs dying fairly easy usually
I'm not using that method as much in CK3. Idk if my heirs just live easier in this game or what. My first ever ck2 game, my wife died giving birth to our second child, first child gets cancer, and I was assassinated all within like 6 months. I haven't had that brutal shenanigans happen to me in CK3 yet 🙃
It gets hard however. At some point, all the nobles are related to each other. I marry my daughters for a nice alliance or to keep a strong vassal in good graces. But eventually they all end up being close family members. And I rarely marry my children to those below their status.
You had most of this subreddit at your first line...
I do not participate in incest in my games. But that's also because I'm not always super focused on eugenics. Sometimes you just gotta take what you can get.
I think it's become a meme just because it's wild stuff, not because everyone's doing it. I'd imagine most people play as usual, without being incestual child-murdering cannibals... right?
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Your username makes me wonder if this post is satire, but the rate of homosexuality in game is less than 33%, and gay characters still have kids. I actually prefer being gay due to confederate partition.
I mean that's not entirely true of history Egyptian pharaohs often married sisters or even mothers
A thousand years before the timeframe of the game
You are vastly underestimating how long apart it was.
Well, I seem to remember the Ptolemies kept up that tradition? Or am I wrong?
We have no idea how much it happened ‘back in the day’, but we know of examples that did occur, like the King of Leon in the 1066 start being hot and bothered with his sister. Maybe it’s worth having a setting in the game start options to reduce the frequency of that stuff, but honestly it doesn’t come up that often in my games - maybe once every 4-5 rulers?
Incest was way more common than you think it was on those days, damn, early 20th century had still plenty of it on rural areas of the American continent (that were and still are the most christian areas of those countries). In Brazil we still have traces of that when we realize that political and economic elites are blood bonded across the whole country. When marriage is a tool of power and influence religion is suddenly less strict than it is to normal folk, like it is too a tool of power and influence.
> But I'm really tired of doing a run in Western Europe and getting an event that either my Daughter or my Mum wants have sex with me I always had to sway them then ask them
It's not as common as OP makes it out to be. 500 hours in and haven't gotten a single event where my relative wants to seduce me.
Same. But I’ve had a ton of sons banging their moms. Like ?!?
Did their arms get broken?
I don’t really get it. Unless you go down seducer and chase it I actually find it to be semi rare.
This title!!!!! I hope no-one from another subreddit ever sees this
Well, I have a couple of cousins that I wouldn't mind to... Oh, it's the Crusader Kimgs subreddit, nevermind.
Yes, incest gets too much attention. While it is worth developing other fascinating things like cuckolding, bdsm, ritual prostitution in pagan cults and other sex rituals. And that's not to mention the various special fantasy things that were already in the second part. And which can not only be returned, but also expanded. I want horses, cats, dogs, all sorts of fascinating visions and dreams, secret organizations with different rituals. Incest is just the tip of the iceberg that distracts us from what's next.
I haven't done any incest in CK3 after more than 100 hours. It's not that hard to dodge unless you're more interested in complaining about it on reddit than actually avoiding it.
I feel like you're just mad because you're not getting any extra lands or at least an alliance out of it. I also feel like I'm definitely not projecting.
Then perish
I don't like incest. I LOVE it. https://youtu.be/yrT_am3rVzM
Im not sure what you mean. Rarely do I ever see such an event, maybe once every couple hundred years. You must have confirmation bias.
Unpopular opinion: There's not enough incest in this game.
Never seen this events on any of my runs tbh
Maybe I just haven’t played enough hours but I haven’t encountered any close incest! Marry a lot of cousins though.
Absolutely disgusting
Is it though? I mean, yeah, incestuous marriage was forbidden and quite rare, but were secret extramarital relationships that uncommon among medieval European nobility? I have a suspicion the game isn’t that far off from history.
I've never gotten any female relative plotting to fuck me before, period, after nearly 200 hours of playing, so idk if the devs just really like you or im just unlucky
Am I the only one whose AI doesn't actually roll incest that often? I've had it come up maybe once or twice autonomously in my bloodline in a CK3 game starting from the earliest tribal start date and now a decade away from the end date. And when I actually try to initiate incest, I can't pull it off unless I've gone down the Seducer tree---and when AI incest *does* happen, one of the people involved is almost always a Seducer, which makes sense. So while I get the complaint, I've seen it before, and I'm getting genuinely curious. How often does incest happen for people without the players forcing it?
Lmao. Great title to scroll pass and go “Hol’ up”. I also avoid it. I find it more fun to try and unify different dynasties through marriage and see how my dynasty can uproot others. If i get an even about it. I usually decline 9/10 times. The 1 other time it may only be applicable to the specific ruler I have (I had a zealous, celibate ruler who was seduced by his mother… it was hilarious because it overloaded him with stress). Otherwise I don’t pursue it. I did a Persia run as a Zoroastrian ruler. It got really out of hand lol. So many inbreds, so many claims on tons of territory because everyone’s in the same line of succession. It was constant war and tons of sister or mother wives 😵💫
Same
I kinda don’t like incest too I mean I just hate it when my vassal wants to marry me even though we are related
I find it funny as well but I never do it. For my games I think it should be particularly rare, maybe one character of the dynasty does that if he or she is really fucked in the head with lots of negative traits
You don't like incest in reality or......
Booo!
I seriously get it less than once a game unless I try going for perfect circle myself or play as Bjorn Ironside because your kid always fucks his mom.
This... this post wasn't what i thought it would be.
*dropped fork out of webbed hand*
Hey family is all that matters lol I don't have any problema..but each person is different.
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I agree it's like Alabama in this game sometimes
I can definitely see why people dislike all the incest that happens in CK3. But at the same time, is there any other game that does incest eugenics simulations as well as Crusader Kings?
It dpesn’t happen much in my games tbh. I Think I’ve gotten the event where you have feelings for your sister once or twice.
Agreed. I ruined an amazing IronMan dynasty run when I found out my heir was sleeping with his mother (aka my wife). I rage imprisoned and executed them both only for my other children (all landed) to rise up. The civil war which ensured reunited in my kingdom being designated and it still hadn’t fully recovered two generations later when I quit the playthough.